This Month: Upcoming Building Professionals Appreciation Event, Recap of our June Speaker Series, and More Green News

SiGBA Building Professionals Event, THIS Thursday, 5:30pm

This Thursday, September 10th, SiGBA will be hosting representatives from the Town of Truckee and Truckee Donner PUD who will giving short presentations on the latest trends in energy conservation, water conservation, and upcoming changes in the Energy Star standard. This will be followed by a Q&A session and food and beverages.

Time: 5:30 - 7:00 PMLocation: MWA at The Rock in Truckee

Hope to see you there!

Cost Effective Energy Retrofits - SiGBA Speaker Series Recap

On June 17th SiGBA hosted it’s first speaker series event of 2015. The event featured Mary Winston of Energy Masters, who discussed three recent home energy retrofit projects in the Reno area in her “Greening Your Home” presentation.

Energy Masters’ primary focus is on air-sealing homes to prevent energy loss to the outside and repairing any heating system duct leaks to ensure the heating system is working as efficiently as possible. She shared many great photos and details about finding and fixing all the leaks. They also strategically increased insulation in key areas of each house – attic, floors or around the ducts. In Reno’s climate, inadequate attic insulation can be a substantial source of heat loss in the winter and heat gain in the summer.

Mary’s company carefully tracked the energy consumption (primarily heating fuel – natural gas or propane) before and after the projects to measure their effectiveness. In all three cases they found the projects would pay for themselves in less than a decade, and in the case of the older homes the payback was even shorter – fewer than five years.

Streamlined LEED Documentation Path Now Available for California Projects

A new alternative LEED documentation path is now available for use on select credits by all projects subject to the 2013 California Green Building Standards Code (CALGreen) mandatory requirements.

Our partners at the Sierra Nevada Alliance are holding their 21st Conference: Back to our Roots, September 25-26th, 2015 in scenic North Lake Tahoe. Experts will present background, challenges, and information on how Climate, Forest Management, Drought/Water, and Natural Capital/Environmental Markets are impacting the Sierra. There will also be a silent auction, evening networking reception and beautiful venue. Read all the details and register today at: www.sierranevadaalliance.com/conference.

Energy use is often double what some energy modelers estimated at the start, according to a new report by the National Institute for Building Science (NIBS) and the New Buildings Institute (NBI). The report outlines some of the reasons for this, including the following barriers to achieving energy goals.